


The Gift

by Mangokiwitropicalswirl



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s06e10 Tithonus, F/M, Post-Episode: s06e10 Tithonus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-28 23:58:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10842165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mangokiwitropicalswirl/pseuds/Mangokiwitropicalswirl





	The Gift

It seems a sacrilege to call it beautiful. But it is.  
The woman’s coat looks almost purple in the deep black pigment of the film; her pale skin is shock white and smooth as a doll’s. Her open eyes look toward approaching light, and the wisp of breath escaping from her mouth – what he had said was death itself – looked like the soul exhaling on a winter morning. If not for the shimmering pool of blood spilling from her cloche, she looked almost alive, but merely posed for the photographer’s gaze.   
It reminds Scully of painting of Ophelia she saw once – Ophelia at the moment of her drowning, hands trailing in the black stream strewn with flowers, her eyes sad but steady as the dead weight of her flowing gown pulls her under. A thought flits through her mind, that how often in their death, young women are made to look so beautiful.  
But even amidst thoughts of death and youth and beauty, she is still here to gather evidence. She seizes on the name scrawled in the corner and hurries to call Mulder.   
“Louis Brady, Mulder. Tell me what you find out.”  
She can’t call Ritter. She won’t call Ritter. It hadn’t taken more than half a day for Scully to settle into loathing him. She had tried not to. Really, she had. Kersh was throwing her a bone, a lifeline. And even though she had no intention of grabbing it without pulling both she and Mulder out of background checking limbo, she had at least to make an effort.  
But then Ritter started swaggering around talking about “busting this guy,” and bragging about knowing judges, fixing warrants. Scully had simply stopped talking to him, using the silence to pay even closer attention to the clues in front of her. Fellig’s own confessions, the pained look on his face in the interrogation room, had led her to his lacerated back and his improbable story.  
She hadn’t been surprised when Mulder called her, full of theories, his mind racing a hundred miles a minute toward some unexpected truth. This was how they worked, how they’d always worked. Not at an effort to “bust” guys or make the details fit a preconceived conclusion. No, they started every case from scratch, everything on the table, no guide but truth and the whetstone of the other’s intellect to strike their own against.   
She loves that about him. About them together. Mulder’s mind is everything that Ritter’s never could be. Mulder’s swagger is never about exerting his power over perpetrators, it’s just confidence in his ideas. An intellectual dominance, not a physical one.  
Which is why it always surprises her a little when she hears his confidence waver. His comment on the phone – “he has nice things to say about you, though. Mostly”– there’s a tiny blip of worry underneath the teasing. As if all it takes is reassignment and she’ll reconsider everything. She remembers first hearing this anxiety in their case with Tooms, a moment she recalls with a shiver, when he’d brushed his fingers briefly on her blouse as he’d grasped her necklace, tugging her slightly toward him as he voiced his feelings of connection. She had accused him of being territorial, which is, after all, just the workplace word for jealous.   
She would never say aloud now, even to herself, how much she likes his territoriality. Now she is his, and just as much, he hers.   
These are the thoughts running in the background of her mind as she stalls Fellig, waiting for Mulder to hurry up and call her back. Fellig is a sadly hollow man. His certainty he’s outlived the joys of life unsettles her, especially in this year she’s had post-cancer.   
“What about love?” she asks. She winces at his answer. He tells how he forgot his own wife’s name and she is speechless. Internally, she pities him intensely. He can’t have really loved, she thinks. He’s never even tried, in all these years, to understand what would make the rest of us bargain for every extra day of life.   
Even discounting love, and that’s a lot, there’s simpler things. There’s your legs slipping into a warm bath, or the sky after rain. There’s your hands wrapping around a cup of coffee and bringing it slowly to your lips. Any one of these might be worth staying alive for one more year at least. And then next year you’d find a new thing – a bird call you hadn’t noticed, a novel you re-read a hundred times, a knitted scarf, a song.  
But maybe love’s what colors it, she wonders. Maybe all alone, the rest of it goes dim. She tries to think of going on without everyone she knows, as Fellig has. For a moment now, she understands. The real curse would be the emptiness. Then she remembers Bruckman and his prophecies – for him, it wasn’t when but how we died. The world suddenly seems full of haunted men.   
In all the stories, death sweeps in as darkness. But Ritter charges through the curtain in a shaft of light like a bright, avenging angel. She almost doesn’t feel the bullet; she’s still squinting at his swirling coat when the metal rends her gut. She’s pinned against the wall, eyes open and astonished.  
And then the world goes colorless, its shadows and its brightnesses accentuated, the way they are at dusk before the sun goes down for good.  
It seems a sacrilege to call it beautiful. But it is.

Ritter is new to the Bureau, but not so new he hasn’t heard the rumors. Spooky Mulder’s quirky quest is legendary around the halls of Quantico, both as a fascination and a cautionary tale. So when Agent Scully introduced them, Ritter thought he’d understood everything. Here was a man who lost his mind to conspiracy and fable, too far gone to rehabilitate. In the rumblings in the break room he heard stories of Antarctic quests and bees, UFO sightings and secret vaults, about how every paranormal monster tale got routed through their office.  
But there’s another set of rumors Ritter’s new enough to not have heard. Maybe it’s that now that they’re not tucked away in the basement, the bullpen rumor mill is more discreet about its speculations. “Screwing since year two,” is the usual explanation for their bond. But Ritter hasn’t heard yet how they must be more than partners.   
He registers how beautiful she is, and how hard it must have been for Mulder working day by day beside her not to cross some lines. He doesn’t think he’d manage it himself. And even though she’s the senior agent, he entertains some impure after-hours thoughts about her creamy skin and piercing eyes. It’s not uncommon; partners screw around and ADs look the other way. These two are probably no different.  
But he is unprepared for Mulder’s absolute stark frenzy.   
Ritter’s cold from shock and shaking, pacing the hospital corridors still covered in her blood. He knows he must have made some calls – somehow they made it here. But he can’t remember dialing. His hands still quiver and his stomach’s tied in knots. Down the hall he hears shouting.  
“Where the hell is she?!”   
Ritter watches Mulder towering over the nurses’ station, his hands pounding flat on the counter top. “Dana Scully – where is she?!” The volume of his voice is turning heads throughout the hall, and Mulder looks as jumpy as a caged animal, shifting on his feet as the nurses flip through files. He turns and strides toward Ritter when he sees him.  
“What the fuck happened, Ritter?!” Mulder races toward him. Ritter winces and tries to back away. Mulder corners him and twists a knot of bloody shirt inside his fist, pressing him against the wall. “Tell me where she is!”  
He doesn’t know what happened, Ritter thinks, not meeting Mulder’s wide-eyed gaze. He can’t tell him the truth either. Mulder will kill him, this he’s figured out already.   
“She’s,” Ritter gulps, his tongue sticking in his throat, “she’s in surgery.”  
“What. Happened?!” Mulder leans against him with his elbows in his gut.  
“Gunshot wound.” Ritter’s hedging, mapping an escape route with his shifting eyes. “To the abdomen.”  
“Oh god.” Mulder doubles over as if he’s been shot himself, releasing Ritter from his grasp. “Oh god, no.” The color drains from Mulder’s face and his breath leaves him in one swoop. He braces himself with one hand against the wall. Ritter hesitates a moment before he takes off running, ducking down the nearest stairwell in a panic.  
It takes Mulder half a second to realize what Ritter’s doing, and then he’s off and running. “Ritter, you fuck!” He yells after him, swinging the stairwell door wide enough it bangs back against the wall with a harsh metallic clang. He’s about to take off down the stairs when he remembers, Scully. She’s here somewhere. He stops. A few flights below him there’s an echo of a heavy door swung shut.  
Mulder breathes and grips the railing, turning back to the sterile corridor and the nurses’ station. “Ms. Scully is in surgery,” a short blond nurse tells him. “Would you like to have a seat?” She nods toward the waiting room as Mulder tries to steady his breathing.   
He hasn’t stopped since getting off the plane. He’d hopped the regional commuter jet as soon as he had found the open casefile, never stopping to call Kersh. He’d dialed Scully twenty times, willing her to pick the damn phone up. His fingers twitched the whole flight. He had chewed his way through half a bag of seeds, as if the grinding motion of his jaw could have made the plane go faster.  
There was voicemail when he landed, a shaky Ritter rambling and breathless, “NYU Medical Center.” Then a pause. “You… you might want to hurry.”  
Now he collapses in a wood-armed chair and leans to grip his head between both hands. He can hardly sit still half a minute before his mind resumes its racing. Skinner. Skinner might know something. If he doesn’t, he’ll find out.  
Mulder’s reaching for his phone just as it rings. “Mulder,” he croaks.  
“Mulder, what the hell is going on?” It’s Skinner.  
“I was just about to call you, sir. Agent Scully’s been shot.”  
“I heard that, Agent Mulder. What are you doing up there? Kersh is on the rampage. Something about you mucking up an arrest?”  
“Why isn’t he on the rampage that one of his agents is currently in surgery for a gunshot to the abdomen?!” Mulder yells into the phone. “I’d think that would rank a little higher than some goddamn botched arrest!”  
“Shit.” Skinner swallows audibly. “What happened?”  
“I was just about to call you and find out,” says Mulder. “Ritter was here, looking like something the cat dragged in. He was…”. And here the gravity of her injuries sinks in again. His voice quavers, “he was covered in her blood.”  
“Jesus.” Skinner sighs. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll try to find out what’s going on. Stay by your phone.”  
“Yes, sir.” Mulder nods. As if he was going to take another breath without his hand gripping the damn phone. He tries to settle in the stiff beige chair, but in a minute he gets up again and walks a frantic circle. He’s alone in the low-lit room and for that he’s grateful. It gives him space to think. Which is when he starts to think how Ritter ran. Why would he run?  
Mulder stops in his tracks when it hits him. Ritter did it. He shot her. The brown-nosing motherfucker shot her.  
Mulder’s hands ball into a fist and he nearly hits the wall. It’s cinderblock, so he stops himself just short, all his anger quivering without someplace to go. He circles the room again and flips open the phone.   
“Ritter!” It goes directly to his voicemail. “I swear to God, Ritter! If she dies, I will end you!” Mulder’s yelling almost incoherently, the rest of his message a swirl of expletives and blame.  
“Mr. Mulder?” A nurse runs in the room and interrupts his tirade. “Mr. Mulder, we need you to keep it down please.”  
Mulder punches end and flips the phone shut forcefully. He takes a slow breath through clenched teeth. “Sorry.”  
“Mr. Mulder, we see from Ms. Scully’s files that you’re her primary emergency contact?”  
He swallows, fearing what comes next. “Um, yes. She’s my partner.”  
“Well could you come with me, please? The surgery team would like to see you.”  
“Okay.” He breathes a little slower. “Is she… is she going to be okay?”  
“I don’t have any information, sir, I’m sorry,” the nurse says. “She’ll be in surgery for awhile. Just come with me.”

It’s a cliche to say the hours passed in a blur, but for Mulder there was no other way to say it. There’s a quality to hospital lights, the fluorescence mixed with the pungency of industrial cleaners, that makes his brain just file these times away in the mental space his psyche labels, “hospital.” They’re indistinguishable from one another, a blur of white and worry.  
There were phone calls to Skinner and to Maggie. There were strict warnings to stay away from Ritter. There was a parade of different doctors in blue scrubs offering updates that he barely understood. Scully was the one who did these things. It wasn’t that he wasn’t capable, just that in the years since they had been together, he’d begun to outsource his need to know these things to her. Scully is in charge of doctor jargon, he’s in charge of, what exactly?   
Right now he couldn’t tell you as uselessness settles over him like a sedative. He waits outside the recovery room in a molded plastic chair.   
When Ritter comes back in cleaner clothes to see how Scully’s doing, he watches Mulder camped like a sentinel outside her room and quickly turns around. Down the hall beyond the reach of Mulder’s hearing, he dials Kersh.  
“Sir, I’m sure by now you’ve heard,” Ritter starts.  
“So unfortunate, Agent. Please keep me apprised,” Kersh answers.  
“Sir,” Ritter pauses. “Why didn’t you tell me? If I’d known….”  
“Known what?” Kersh is confused.  
“That Agents Mulder and Scully are,” he pauses again, considering his words, “that they’re together.”  
“They’re not together, Agent,” says Kersh. “I split them up. You were meant to give Agent Scully a chance to come back in the fold.”  
“No, sir, I know that,” Ritter tries to be deferential, but it’s clear that Kersh isn’t hearing what he means. “I mean, if I had known that they were lovers, I would have….”  
“Your information’s incomplete, Agent.” Kersh cuts him off. “And I’d advise against spreading such unfounded rumors through the Bureau.”  
“Yes sir.” Ritter swallows. “It’s just that….”  
“That what? There should be nothing in your behavior that gives consideration to Agent Scully’s former partnership with Mulder.”  
“I understand, sir.” Ritter nods. “I’ll let you know when she wakes up.”  
“Thank you for the call, Agent.”  
Ritter cuts the call and ponders what to do. He’ll face a hearing, that’s for sure. He needs her to pull through. He immediately feels terrible for the fact he thinks that if she dies, his career is likely over. But still, he thinks it. His survival depends on hers. Somehow, he figures this whole thing is Mulder’s fault. No matter what Kersh says, there’s something going on between these two.   
He’s seen agents shot before, been in the hospital, taken the statements, filed the reports. He’s young, but not naive. The look in Mulder’s eye as he had held him to the wall was not just the look of a worried partner. It was the look of love terrified to lose its dearest object. Whatever’s going on between the two of them, Kersh clearly doesn’t know the half – the slimmest fraction – of it.   
Ritter lingers in the hospital awhile, waiting for the minute Mulder steps away so he can safely get some answers. He wanders corridors for hours, peeking his head around the narrow corner to check if Mulder’s finally gone. But he never leaves. Ritter watches him wring his hands and check his phone a dozen times. He sees him stand and peer through the small glass window of her door, his foot tapping on the cool linoleum. He sees him try to drink the little cups of bitter coffee, but Mulder doesn’t leave the hallway for a minute. It’s 10 p.m when Ritter finally goes, Mulder still gaunt-eyed and attentive at her door.

She sleeps all night and well into the morning. They had moved her to a private room at midnight once her vital signs were stable. Mulder walked along beside the cot despite the nurse’s protestations.   
“We’ll just meet you up there, Mr. Mulder,” the orderly explained.  
He shook his head. “I’m coming with you,” he mumbled in a stupor of exhaustion, reaching in his pocket for his badge in case his insistence weren’t enough. He needs to be there when she opens her eyes. He’s lost track of all the times she’s done the same for him.   
Her room has a fold-out chair for visitors and sometime past 2 a.m he pulls it out and dozes off, draping his long coat over himself for warmth, the neon buzz of the machines as forlornly familiar as summertime cicadas.   
Mid morning she begins to stir and Mulder sits up straight and moves his chair a little closer to the bed. She’s barely propped up, kept flat to keep her BP low, so he leans in so he can see her.   
Scully feels as if she’s surfacing from underneath dark water, her limbs fluttering languidly back to life. Her eyes slide open in a groggy haze and she turns toward the hovering shape beside her. She hears a hitch of breath before she sees him.  
“Hi, I’m Fox Mulder. We used to sit next to each other at the FBI.”  
A smile he’s crossed continents to witness creeps into her eyes, her dry mouth tries to turn up stiffly at the edges. Her nearby fingers tap against the bed, and he covers them with his.

The first week is a whirl of pain management and monitoring infection. Scully mostly passes in and out of sleep; she loses track of night and day beyond the routine vitals checks and interruptions. Maggie comes and keeps a vigil for the first few days – Mulder had called her from the cab his first day there.   
The second day that she’s awake, Scully turns her head and beckons Mulder closer. His jaw is dark with a wiry scruff of two-day beard. She nods at his rumpled dress shirt and his wrinkled pants and mumbles teasingly, “Mulder, you stink.”  
“You’re one to talk, Ms. Spongebath,” he retorts with a grin.  
“Clean up. Go Home.” She’s hoarse, but still commanding. “Mom’s here now. I’ll be fine.”  
“But we don’t know how long you’ll be here,” he protests.  
“It could be a while,” Scully sighs, “if what the doctors say is accurate. You’ll be expected back at work.”  
“Maybe they can move you down to Washington?”  
She shakes her head. “They won’t unless there’s pressing reason.” She shrugs. “But I’m serious, you have to go clean up.The nurses are starting to avoid my room.”  
Mulder laughs and nods before bending down to press a soft kiss to her cheek. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

The next morning Scully wakes and Maggie isn’t in the spot she had been the night before. Over the ambient beeping of machines, Scully hears her in the hall. She’s talking to someone, a low voice she knows well. Scully rolls her eyes and smiles as she hears Mulder insisting, “take the bagels, Maggie, I brought them for you.”  
He maneuvers through the door, a duffel over one shoulder, his arms balancing a stack of books, a paper sack from the bagel shop and a couple styrofoam cups of coffee. He’s shaved and changed into worn jeans and thrown his leather jacket over a grey t-shirt. His eyes brighten when he sees that she’s awake.  
“Room service,” he calls out as he enters, plopping his pile of books and things onto surfaces and side tables and chairs.   
“Mulder, what are you doing here?” She croaks. “I thought I told you to go back to Washington?”  
“Can’t get rid of me that easily, I’m on leave now.” He raises his eyebrows suggestively.  
Scully’s eyes widen. “Kersh? Are you in trouble?”  
“No, no,” Mulder shakes his head. “It’s not that. I’m taking some of all that built up leave that I’ve got coming. I don’t think HR knew what hit them when I sent in the paperwork this morning.”  
“Mulder,” Scully sighs, “you don’t have to do this. I told you, my mom is here.”  
“Scully, what else am I going to do? Sit around doing pointless background checks and scut work while you’re all the way up here?”  
She knows when to stop protesting and lets him settle in the chair as if he has nowhere else to be, no grand quest to pursue, no other purpose than to sit here in this tiny room with her and watch her sleep.  
“Besides,” he says once he’s comfortable, “I’ve been wanting to catch up on my reading.” He nods at the stack of books piled on the table, with New York Public library stickers fixed along their spines.  
Scully tries to push up on her elbows and get a better look, and so he presses buttons to angle up the bed so she can see.   
“I wasn’t sure what you’re in the mood for, so I brought a broad selection.”  
“Oh really,” she smirks, ready to let him perform his usual show and tell. Ever since that first slideshow in the basement, he has never tired of showing her his finds. They have a pattern now, a dance. He holds up a dark-covered book.  
“Elmore Leonard’s latest,” he waves it back and forth. “Crime fiction at its best,” he offers enticingly.  
Scully shakes her head back and forth against the pillow. “I’m living in crime fiction, now. No, thank you.”  
“Hmm,” Mulder doesn’t seem surprised and pulls another off of the pile. Scully almost blushes as she catches a glimpse of the scarlet-colored bodice-ripper. “The Immortal Queen and Her Rogue Knight. Whaddya say, Scully? I think I could do the voices.”  
“No Harlequin,” Scully whispers, almost sad to disappoint him even though she knows he’s teasing. “And no immortal queens.”  
“Ah,” he breathes slow. “Right.” He sets the book aside and reaches for another. “Third time’s a charm?” He holds up the next thick hardback with a question in his eyes.  
Scully recognizes this one and she registers surprise. “Tolkien? Really?”  
“Have you read it?” Mulder asks.  
“Actually, you might be surprised to learn I have.”  
“Was young Dana into fantasy?” He smiles.  
“No, but her brother was,” says Scully.  
“Bill?!” Mulder scoffs, unable to fathom the humorless, straight-edged man he’s met enjoying stories about elves and hobbits.  
“Not Bill,” Scully shakes her head. “Charlie. He got really into them one summer and made me read them all. It was something we could talk about.”  
“Did you like them?” Mulder is surprised, trying to expand his image of a logical young Scully to include this seemingly out-of-character information.  
“I did. A little long, and wordy, but fun.” She smiles remembering Charlie and his earnestness, the hours they spent discussing elven languages and plot twists. “Let me guess, you were a fan?”   
“I think you know me well enough to answer that,” Mulder smiles sheepishly.  
“How many times?”  
“What?”  
“How many times did you read them?” Scully grins imagining gawky 14-year-old Mulder lost in Middle Earth, ignoring his mother calling him for dinner. She imagines how good it must have felt for him to escape into another world with everything that was going wrong for him in this one.  
“I lost track a long time ago,” he chuckles. “A lot. A lot a lot a lot.”  
“Well, I hope you don’t think I’m going to be in here long enough to read that whole thing.” Scully’s face betrays some rarely-displayed worry.  
“Of course not,” Mulder says, laying a hand gently on her arm, “So far you’re doing great. I think you’ll be home in no time.”  
She swallows a lump in her throat and does her best to lean toward him even as sharp darts of pain radiate from her abdomen every time she shifts her weight. Pain crinkles her forehead and she bites her lip in a grimace.  
“Don’t move too much,” Mulder stops her movements. “Just tell me what parts you want to read.” He nods toward the steaming cups. “Can you have coffee yet?”   
“Not yet,” she sighs and looks off toward the window in resignation. “Maybe you should read me the part with Eowyn in the Houses of Healing.”  
“Ah, so you identified with Eowyn, I bet.” Mulder lifts the book and begins flipping through thin, feathery pages.  
“Mulder, there are only two girls in the whole book, and one of them is an immortal Elf princess who has barely any lines.” She tilts her head toward him with a wry smile. “Who else was I going to identify with?”  
“You forgot Galadrial,” he teases.  
“Okay fine, three women. Two of whom aren’t even human.”  
“So, let me guess, you wanted Eowyn to end up with Aragorn.” Mulder’s still paging through the heavy tome looking for the chapter.  
Scully shrugs her shoulders slightly and smiles. “Well, duh, Mulder. He’s the hero, right?”   
She pauses, watching his eyes move across the pages, taken aback for a moment by the gentleness in them, and a contentedness she rarely sees. A contentedness that’s surprising given present circumstances. Her heart constricts abruptly in a rush of gratefulness and affection. She reaches for his forearm and squeezes it gently, brushing a thumb through the fine hairs there. “Who did you identify with, Mulder? Who did you want to be?”  
“Mainly, I would have to say Gimli.” His eyes twinkle.  
“Ha!” Scully laughs sharply and then grabs her stomach. “Ow! Mulder! Don’t make me laugh!”  
“Sorry!” He immediately looks worried and apologetic. “No, of course as a kid, everyone thinks they’re Frodo, right? The one who carries the Ring and defeats ultimate evil.”  
Scully nods.  
“But as I get older, I think the real hero there is Sam, you know.” He looks at her softly, but can’t quite meet her gaze. “His loyalty, his unwavering devotion to his friend. It all would have faltered without Sam. Frodo would have been lost by chapter two without him.”  
Scully nods again and reaches for his hand, smoothing her thumb over top of his where he holds the book. Her memories of the week’s events replaying in her mind, she forms her thoughts into a question she ‘til now has been much too scared to voice.  
“Mulder,” she mumbles, “you don’t think Fellig really was immortal, do you?”  
Mulder shrugs. “I don’t know how else to explain it. So I guess, yes, he was.”  
Scully’s eyes grow wide and worried. “So what does that mean for me?” Her voice is just a dry whisper.  
“You mean, did he take your place?”  
She nods slowly, a little embarrassed to be entertaining such thoughts.  
“You know,” Mulder pauses, “Tolkien had this idea that death was actually a gift. He called it ‘the gift of men’ and the immortal creatures like the elves envied humans who were allowed to die and pass beyond the confines of this world.”  
“I could see that,” Scully nods. “I saw that in Fellig, his envy of the dying.” She thinks about the photographs he took, their violent beauty, how he tried to catch a glimpse of the portal between this world and beyond. And she thinks about how Fellig had drained all the joy from this life by his longing for the next.  
“But,” Mulder continues, “in Tolkien, even the immortal were allowed to give it up. Maybe if your attachment to this world – and those you love – is strong enough, you get to die beside them.”  
“So, you only get the gift of death if you’ve first enjoyed the gift that is your life?” She’s trying to make sense of everything, spinning through the possibilities.  
“Something like that,” Mulder nods. “Maybe Fellig’s problem was he wanted it too much?”  
“Mulder,” she whispers, forcing him to look at her and lean close to hear. “I want all of life’s gifts. I’m not like Fellig.”  
“No, you’re not.” Mulder’s eyes brim with unshed tears.  
“I don’t want to become like him.”  
“You won’t.” Mulder threads his fingers through her hand. “I promise.”  
She looks up at him though glistening eyes and pins him with her gaze. “I don’t want you to become like him either.”  
He nods in understanding. “I guess that means we need to do a little better at this living thing, is what you’re saying?”  
“I think so,” her voice is rough and hoarse from too much talking. “Now, I’m tired. Are you gonna read to me or what?”  
“Your wish is my command, O Queen.” Mulder finds his place and opens to the page. “Hey wait,” he startles and looks over at her, “isn’t this the chapter where Eowyn kisses Faramir?”  
She shrugs and smiles wanly. “I can’t remember. Maybe?”  
“You would pick the one chapter in this whole book that has kissing,” he says teasingly.  
“I guess I gotta live vicariously,” she says with one raised eyebrow and a glint deep in her eyes.  
Mulder smiles and reads aloud until her eyes drift closed. Then he reads on a little further until drowsiness sets in. He softly lifts her sleep-limp hand and presses it against his lips.  
Before he drifts to sleep himself, he looks over at her sleeping form, her sweat-matted hair, the bruises on her forearms from the IV drip, the crusted skin at the corner of her mouth, the inhuman mess of tubes and wires running from her body to robotic grey machines, her doll-white skin like paper far too easily ripped, and a bluish shadow bruising in the curve beneath her eyes.   
This is not the time he’d think to call her beautiful, but she is.


End file.
